The Appointment
by SuperGroverAway
Summary: After years of waiting, the twins have an appointment meeting with some very familiar faces.


The sun had barely begun to peek over the trees, casting just the thinnest slice of golden light through the trees and over the Mystery Shack. The scene would have been downright idyllic were it not interrupted by a flurry of ranting as a young man and his twin hustled outside.

"...Seriously! Of all the days to sleep in!" Dipper was wound up as tight as a snare drum. As usual the difference between his mood and his sister's couldn't have been any starker.

"Oh, relax, bro!" Mabel dismissed his fretting with a bubbly laugh. "It's fine!"

"I just don't get why you didn't set an alarm." He griped. "I mean, we've known about this for ages. Like, literally a decade and a half. And we drive all the way up here to the Shack just so-"

"Yeah, and today's finally the day!" The young woman was practically brimming with excitement. "Ooooh, I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait! We're finally going to get to see them!"

"If you're so excited, then why didn't you try getting up earlier?" The flustered twenty-seven-year-old started hunting frantically around the yard.

"What? It takes like, zero minutes to get out here!" As usual his protests were like water off a duck's back. "Now will you stop being such a worrybutt and get at least a little jazzed up? This is going to be amazing!"

"In case you forgot, if we're not in the right place at the right time then we're going to be in serious…." Dipper distractedly trailed off. The seconds were ticking down, and his memory was doing him no favors at the moment. "Where is it? I thought that…"

Mabel grabbed his attention with a whistle. "Over here! I marked the spot, remember?"

An enormous smirk graced her face as she proudly pointed to the half-buried stone. Even in the dim light of early day it stood out thanks to a faded coat of magenta paint.

"And you didn't remind me earlier because…." He honestly didn't even know why he bothered to ask.

"You're fun when you're upset." Her eyes twinkled mischievously.

He groaned and hot-footed over, joining her without a moment to spare. An unnatural earsplitting crack suddenly rent the air. Tiny sparks of pure blue energy started sparking into existence from clean out of nowhere. Gradually they increased in sound and scope, until a small paranormal cyclone had formed right above the twins' heads.

"YES! Here they coooome!" Mabel sang.

"Get ready!" Dipper hurriedly handed her one end of the small but sturdy tarp he had carried out with them. The two stretched it out beneath the swirling anomaly and took up position just as time and space itself ripped oven with a literal tear.

Yelling shrilly, a pair of flailing preteens plummeted out of the opening like two stones. Dipper gasped in relief as both came to a safe, bouncy landing. Up above, the strange portal crackled and sparked off a few more bolts of energy before it started swirling shut. The twins however paid it no heed as together they gently lowered the tarp to the ground.

Reeling from their wild trip, one of the tweens righted his pine-tree cap, shook his head, then without a moment's hesitation he dutifully checked up on his dazed sister. "Mabel? Mabel! Are you okay?"

"Yeah...I-I think so. Where the heck did we….oh….oh whooooaaahh…." The twelve-year-old girl gazed upon their rescuers. Her brother took stock of their surroundings, and together they went dumb with shock. There was little doubt in their minds who they were meeting face-to-face. Chestnut-brown eyes bulged in their sockets, jaws dangled limply, and for a few moments the stupefied youngsters resembled a pair of beached fish.

Dipper and Mabel patiently gave the tweens some time to mentally process. The young man stepped back and patiently waited. But for Mabel the next twenty seconds passed like an eternity. Hardly able to restrain her glee, the young woman chomped on her lip and fidgeted incessantly.

The girl was the first to get over her surprise. She popped on a gigantic grin, revealing a toothy brace-filled smile.

"Oh, wow…._wow_! Oh, **_WOW_**! It's….it's….you're...we just….and now….!" She ecstatically waved a sweater-sleeved arm. "Hi, me!"

"Hi, me!" Mabel happily greeted herself right back. Wasting no time, the tween leapt to her feet and zipped over. Both started involuntarily bouncing on their toes as the excitement pumped through their veins.

"Omigosh, just look at you!" The younger Mabel pat her dimpled cheeks and gushingly marveled. "That hair! Oooooh, that classy glasses and bandana combo! I knew that I'd be beautiful when I grew up, but I didn't think that I'd be this gorgeous!"

"You better believe it!" The elder Mabel proudly did a twirl. "But c'mon, let's be honest. Is it really that much of a surprise? Just look at how we started out!"

"Yeah! Adorably!" The tween enthusiastically agreed with a giggle. No matter the age, Mabel was never one for modesty.

"Yeah we did! I mean, just look at that amazing sweater, those cute shoes, that hair clip, that winning smile...ooohh, c'mere!" The grown woman squealed. Her past self was just too precious for her to resist, and she swept herself up into an enormous hug. The younger Mabel raised no protest, and squeezed herself back like an enormous stuffed animal.

"We're so crazy cute, I can't stand it! Your cheeks are so rosy! Just look at you!" She adoringly pressed the younger girl's nose. "Boop!"

"And we're so stylish!" The tween flicked the woman's glasses up onto her forehead for a slightly more fashionable look. "Whop!"

While he watched his present and future sister laugh themselves silly with unrestrained delight, by this point the younger Dipper had become bewilderment personified. "Wait…..so we...but I don't even….how are we..."

Justifiably flabbergasted by this strange turn of events, he looked pleadingly to his elder self for answers. At first, he was able to do little then sputter uncontrollably. "Wait, so we actually just...h-how did..."

The young man smiled. He recalled feeling just as baffled he felt when he was in the scrawny boy's exact position.

"Hey, think about it this way...is this really that much weirder than anything else you've seen this summer?"

"I guess not." The badly-needed perspective worked like a charm. "It's just that...well, you get it, don't you? I thought we had done the whole time travel thing already."

"Oh trust me, I know where you're coming from." Dipper gave his full sympathy. "I mean, first we didn't know it was even possible. And then suddenly three times in just a few weeks?"

"I know, right?" The tween quickly brightened up. It was nice to be in the company of someone who clearly understood all the absurdity that he had to put up with. "I mean, who could possibly see this coming at all?"

"Especially when you're investigating with something called a moon sphere." Dipper nodded to the curious contraption in his younger self's hands. "Not like it gives you much of a clue about what it does."

"I know. This thing doesn't look like the moon at all. It's not even round!" The boy griped. The device in question in fact was more of a cross between a rubik's cube and a clock, complete with jagged metal hands pointing to numbers engraved in an dead runic script.

"Those cave trolls are seriously the worst at naming things." The elder Dipper remarked with a shake of his head. "They're just...they're so bad."

"Yeah, you're telling me. Just meeting their leader should have been the big tip off."

He chuckled. "What'd they call him again?"

"King PresidentChiefQueen." Replied the tween before he cracked up, and the two shared a good laugh. The moment unfortunately lasted for only a couple seconds before anxiety crept up on the younger of the two boy looked around. The portal that had carried him and his sister in had closed up a few minutes before without a trace. "Okay, soooo…. we're not like, stuck here or anything, are we? I mean, you guys look like you turned out alright….which I guess means we eventually get out of here? Are we-"

Dipper interrupted before he could work himself into a mental frenzy. "Oh yeah, don't worry about it. All you have give the bottom half of that thing a quarter-turn to the left."

"What, you mean like this?" The boy did as suggested to the strange device. Immediately it started to emit a shrill chiming ring. With a sharp crack and a small boom, a fresh breach in the time-space continuum started to crackle to life just few yards away. Both sets of twins watched it open up to reveal a slightly less decrepit Mystery Shack in the middle of a bright summer day fifteen years before.

"Okay, looks like you're good to go!" Elder Mabel set herself back down.

"Aw, already?" The girl's face fell disappointedly. "But we just got here! Are you sure we can't hang out a little bit more?"

"Sorry, but you know all this crazy stuff works. We have to be super careful, remember? You don't want to totally mess up the timestream and end up doing something like...I dunno, give us all butts for faces, or something weird like that."

"At least that would be an improvement for Dipper." The young girl couldn't resist the golden opportunity. Both Dippers rolled their eyes as their sisters squealed with laughter.

"Ooohh, NICE!" They gave one another a hearty high five.

"We look the same!" Their brothers reminded exasperatedly in unison, to no avail.

"Jeeeez, he still doesn't know how to lighten up, does he?" The younger Mabel exclaimed none too quietly.

"Let's just say our bro's still a work in progress." The young woman glanced to the fresh portal. "Okay, let's go! C'mon, all aboard the time-travel express!"

Woo-woo!" The girl blew an imaginary whistle."Dipper c'mon! My Dipper! Not the big one!"

"Wait, wait!" Her protested as she grabbed his wrist and pulled him through. It was just his rotten luck that as soon as they had to leave, his mind finally started to fill with a multitude of questions. "What do you think we should we do with the Mo-"

"Just get rid of that thing." Dipper already knew exactly what he was going to ask; after all, he made the exact inquiry fifteen years ago. "You need to put two teaspoonfuls chili powder in hot water with some lemon juice and let it soak in there for ten minutes."

"What?" Preteen Mabel whirled around, and now both tweens gazed out curiously from their own time. "How does that even work?"

"Beats us!" The elder Mabel confessed with a shrug. "But it seriously dissolves it in like, no time at all. It's seriously one of the coolest things-"

"Wait!" A heavy realization dawned on the younger Dipper. "So...this means that we're going to have to do this in a couple years, right? This whole meeting ourselves thing?"

"Oh, yeah! Hey, so are we going to see ourselves when we're like you? How are we going to remember when we're supposed to show up? That's so far away!"

"Ah, sorry! Almost forgot!" Dipper hurriedly dug out the piece of paper upon which he had scribbled a date, time, and several instructions.

"Here!" For a moment he was in two different decades at once as he shoved it into his own hands. "Just hold on to this, and you'll be fine!"

"And make sure to mark the spot where we came through!" Mabel suggested. "Paint a rock! That works great!"

"Hey, great idea!" Mabel heartily complimented herself. "Oooh, I'll paint it magenta!"

"Awesome choice!" The two furiously waved goodbye to one another. "I know it was super short, but it was still awesome seeing you! Bye, me!"

"Great seeing you too! Bye, me!"

"Bye! Goodbye, Mabel!" With a dismayed squeak she suddenly noticed the note she had scribbled on her arm in glittery ink the night before. "Oooh! Hold on, one more thing!"

"What?"

"Whatever you do," She began, repeating word-for-word the advice she had been given by herself all those years ago, "Don't think too hard about any of this, okay?"

"Wait, what?" Her younger self chirped confusedly

"Just don't think about any of it!" She dutifully emphasized. "Both of you! Don't worry, it'll be okay!"

"WAIT!" Just as the rip almost finished closing, the younger Dipper realized he was missing a vital opportunity. "Look, I'm not sure if I should ask this, but could you tell me if Wendy and I ever-"

With a snap and a crackle, they were gone. A heartbeat later it was as if the massive time-space disruption had never occurred. Mabel waved one final time at the spot where the young twins had vanished, then triumphantly wiped her hands. "Success!"

"Finally." Dipper exclaimed with a sigh. It was such a weight off his shoulders. He dug out the old laminated note he had been keeping for the last decade and a half years and happily tossed it into one of the battered metal cans by the porch. "And good bye!"

Mabel let out a wistful sigh, sending a twinge of panic through her brother. "What's wrong? We didn't forget anything, did we?"

"Nuh-uh. I just…." She bit her lip, "I was just kind of hoping that maybe you'd….y'know, tell yourself that you get the girl."

He heaved a sigh of relief. "Mabel, we went over this-"

"I know, I know. Time stream and all that confusing stuff. Buuuut…." She gave him a playful shove. "C'mon! I think you totally missed your chance. You gotta admit, you would have saved yourself a whoooole bunch of anxiety, bro."

"I'm not gonna say I didn't think about it." He confessed, glancing down briefly at his wedding band.

"So why didn't you say it?" She relentlessly teased.

"Because when we were in their place, the older me didn't say anything about Wendy. I didn't want to risk changing anything by-"

"Hey wait." Mabel stopped dead in her tracks as something occurred to her. "But you're older Dipper now...aren't you?"

The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. His mind started racing at full power as he tried to process. "Hey….yeah, you're right….so the only reason I didn't say anything about Wendy was because I remember that the future-me didn't mention anything about her to me…but I'm the future-me now, right? And the only reason I didn't mention her to myself was because I remember that when I was younger and went through time, the future-me didn't say anything about…uh-oh..."

It wasn't long until he started going cross-eyed from the mental pretzel. Dipper grimaced apologetically to his sister. "Sorry am I making any sense?"

Mabel's eyes grew saucer-wide as she underwent her own revelation. "It's confusing, but confusing in a way that makes super weird time-loopy sense. And now you got me thinking…"

"What?"

"We knew how to destroy the time-travel thingy, but that's only because older-us told us how to do it...and now we're older-us, and we only knew how to tell younger-us how to destroy it just now only because older-us told us, and they only knew because when they accidentally time-traveled, they were told how to do it by older-them, who only knew how to...wait, so who figured out how to...ow...ow…"

She winced violently. It felt like something in her mind had just explosively short-circuited. "Ow…..owww…."

It quickly got so bad that she needed to lean up against the side of the Shack. Mabel whined in discomfort as she cradled her head. "Owww….ooooowwwwww….Dipper….it hurts…."

"I know, me too." Dipper grimaced. "H-hey, Mabel?"

"Uh-huh?" She whimpered.

"I think I finally know why you told us not to think about any of-"

"Shhh! No more talking!" She begged. "Need a minute….must keep brain from exploding…"


End file.
